"Indescribably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them one morning to the American Chapel in the Rue de Bern, and they were united in our presence and that of Monsieur, who was indescribably affected. ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... and so brilliant as to produce a faint imitation of daylight, even at our immense height above the ground, and the dome of cloud out of which we had emerged assumed a soft fawn color which produced an indescribably beautiful effect. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... with a blue nose and indescribably frosty face, referable to her being very thinly clad in a maze of fluttering odds and ends, to do honour to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... perhaps more the expression, the sweet innocence that characterized her features which gave to them their charm; but in the young man there was infinitely more than this, though effeminate as was his complexion, and the bright sunny curls which floated over his throat, he was eminently and indescribably beautiful, for it was the mind, the glorious mind, the kindling spirit which threw their radiance over his perfect features; the spirit and mind which that noble form enshrined stood apart, and ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... not impressive. It was on a hillside above the Russian Jewish colony, and consisted of a network of cobble-paved alleys, indescribably dirty and incredibly steep. In one or two of these alleys Tish was obliged to turn the car and go up backward, her machine climbing much better on the reverse gear. Crowds of children followed us; dogs got under the wheels and apparently died, judging by the yelps—only to follow us ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dollar nor had any expectations from any source whatever. "He had married," he said, "for love, and for love only; and his bride was far more than worthy of his love." When I thought of these expressions on the part of my friend, I confess that I felt indescribably puzzled. Could it be possible that he was taking leave of his senses? What else could I think? He, so refined, so intellectual, so fastidious, with so exquisite a perception of the faulty, and so keen an appreciation of the beautiful! To be sure, the lady ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... the balete is very frequently indescribably picturesque; and this is so true that, within a space of some hundred paces in diameter—which these gigantic fig-trees usually occupy—one may see by turns grottoes, halls, chambers, that are often furnished with natural seats, formed out of and by the roots themselves. No! no vegetation is ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... the same," cried Agnes. "Last time he forgot I was coming altogether." She wore a flowered muslin—something indescribably liquid and cool. It reminded him a little of those swift piercing streams, neither blue nor green, that gush out of the dolomites. Her face was clear and brown, like the face of a mountaineer; her hair was so plentiful that it seemed banked ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... sound or silence? A faint and indescribably low roar, so low that it might have been real or false, came on the soft night breeze. It was the roar of the camp down there—the strife, the agony, the wild life in ceaseless action—the strange voice of gold, roaring greed and battle ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... like Frances; correctly speaking, one should put it the other way, but as a new actor on the scene of this little story it is natural thus to express it. Her face had something indescribably childlike about it; her blue eyes were almost wistful, though the whole expression was bright and happy and very changeful. Yet there was plenty of 'character'—no dearth of good firm lines, with yet an entire absence of anything denoting hardness or obstinacy; the whole giving from the ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... style, and for its own purposes, when it was first built; and now nothing else can be so perfect as a picture of ivy-grown, peaceful ruin. The banqueting-hall, all open to the sky and with thick curtains of ivy tapestrying the walls, and grass and weeds growing on the arches that overpass it, is indescribably beautiful. The hearthstones of the great old fireplaces, all about the castle, seem to be favorite spots for weeds to grow. There are eight large round towers, and out of four of them, I think, rise smaller ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and uglier; and their ideas in religion, morals, taste, etc., are a monotonously direct reversal of our orthodoxies. There is at least one passage which the absence of all "naughty niceness" and the presence of the indescribably nasty make a good "try" for the acme of the disgusting. More of it is less but still nasty; much of it is silly; all of it ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... faintly reflected from above, made the sky, before a deep and velvety black-blue, look like a gilt canopy based upon a rim of azure mist. The brilliancy waxed golden and more golden still; the blending of the colours became indescribably beautiful; and, lastly, the sun's upper limb rose in brightest saffron above the dimmed and spurious horizon of north-east cloud. The panorama below us emerged dimly and darkly from a torrent of haze, whose waving convex lines, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... its lost morale and did not refuse to shoot down the workers as it had done on previous occasions. The strikes and insurrections were put down in bloody vengeance and there followed a reign of brutal repression indescribably horrible and savage. By way of protest and retaliation, there were individual acts of terrorism, such as the execution of the Governor of Tambov by Marie Spiridonova, but these were of little or no avail. The First Revolution was ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... nightfall, all of a sudden the upper half of the bleak cone yet in sunshine cast upward, athwart the blue sky, upon the moisture precipitated by the falling temperature, a great dark, broadening shaft of shadow, keen-edged and sombre, and spreading far away into measureless space—a sight indescribably strange and solemn. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Othello!—to say nothing of Apollo—what magnificent forms the fellows had, and what indescribably hideous faces! They were tall, muscular, broad-shouldered, small waisted and ankled, round-muscled, black-polished—in a word, elegantly powerful. Many of them might have stood as models for Hercules. Like superfine cloth, they were of various ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... sea,—wave upon wave of steel,—thunder following thunder.... There was yet scarcely any wind; but there must have been wild weather elsewhere,—and the breakers were steadily heightening. Their motion fascinated. How indescribably complex such motion is,—yet how eternally new! Who could fully describe even five minutes of it? No mortal ever saw two waves break in exactly ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... climb the stairs laboriously, with Frau Nirlanger's light figure flitting just ahead of him. At the bend in the stairway she turned and looked down on us a moment, her eyes very bright and big. She pressed her fingers to her lips and wafted a little kiss toward us with a gesture indescribably graceful and pathetic. She viewed her husband's laborious progress, not daring to offer help. Then the turn in the stair hid ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... long time the reconstruction of all my theories of life on a purely pagan basis occupied my whole attention. The exquisite outlines of the marvellous castle, the romantic woods, the horses moving, the lovers leaning to each other's faces enchanted me; and then the indescribably beautiful description of the performance of As You Like It, and the supreme relief and perfect assuagement it brings to Rodolph, who then sees Mdlle. de Maupin for the first time in woman's attire. If she were dangerously beautiful as a man, that beauty is forgotten ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... sir?" she said; "what shall I fetch?" Her instantaneous resumption of the serving-maid's relation to him jarred on Willan at that second indescribably, and shut down like a floodgate on the words he was about ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... stay, but there was always more or less breeze, and the kind of breeze that refreshes. I should like to visit Catanzaro in the summer; probably one would have all the joy of glorious sunshine without oppressive heat, and in the landscape in those glowing days would be indescribably beautiful. ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... their nice new uniforms, singing at the tops of their voices, and putting their heads together like a college glee-club. Their clear young voices completely filled that great smoky station and rang out with the most indescribably confident inspiriting effect! 'Good God!' cried the dingy, battered soldier at my elbow, 'how little they know what they are going into!' The soldier from Bourgogne said nothing, but looked very stern and sad. The contrast between those two men, one so rebellious, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... to warm, or keep his meals hot and tasty for him, if some emergency among the animals made him late for his usual hours—certainly not the weak and stammering Reuben. He was at her mercy, and he chafed indescribably ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bird-creature hovering a few yards from his face in the darkness was indescribably unpleasant to Woodhouse. As his thought returned he concluded that it must be some night-bird or large bat. At any risk he would see what it was, and pulling a match from his pocket, he tried to strike it on the telescope seat. There was a smoking streak of phosphorescent light, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... his life Kemp discovered that the hill-road was indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had there been a slower or more painful method of progression than running. All the gaunt villas, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... I am pretty. You should have said indescribably pretty!" And, laughing gaily, Lida sank into a chair, glancing again at Sanine. Raising her arms and thus emphasizing the curves of her shapely bosom, she proceeded to remove her hat, but, in so doing, let a long hat-pin ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the battle rushed in and overwhelmed them. They were no longer persons but mere spectators, mere impressions of a tremendous convulsion. They became unreal even to themselves, miniatures of personality, indescribably small, and the two antagonistic realities, the only realities in being were first the city, that throbbed and roared yonder in a belated frenzy of defence and secondly the aeroplanes hurling inexorably towards them over the round ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... so numerous and so brilliant as to produce a faint imitation of daylight, even at our immense height above the ground, and the dome of cloud out of which we had emerged assumed a soft fawn color that produced an indescribably ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... the next day was—"Well, she is a very sweet creature. There is something indescribably touching in her voice and eyes, so soft and wistful, especially when she implores one not to be hard on those great scrambling ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon me an impression indescribably strange. I felt myself standing upon a crisis. I felt called upon to choose between self and self-sacrifice. Had the choice left no chance of saving my own life, I fear I should have obeyed the "first law of nature;" but, as already stated, of my own life I ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... surpassing all that have ever yet been discovered in the forests of the world. Here indeed is the tree-lover's paradise; the woods, dry and wholesome, letting in the light in shimmering masses of half sunshine, half shade; the night air as well as the day air indescribably spicy and exhilarating; plushy fir-boughs for campers' beds and cascades to sing us to sleep. On the highest ridges, over which these old Yosemite ways passed, the silver fir (Abies magnifica) forms the bulk ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... the huts of charcoal burners. The undergrowth and jungle were often impenetrable, save by some lone hunter or wild animal. The gnarled and knotted oaks were distorted and the bushes, even in the flush of a May morning, were black and ugly. At evening it was indescribably desolate, and save when the armies came there was no sound but the lone cry of the whip-poor-will, one of ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 'em I had Bloomers enough when I was in bondage. You see," she said, "dey used to weave what dey called nigger-cloth, an' each one of us got jes' sech a strip, an' had to wear it width-wise. Them that was short got along pretty well, but as for me"—She gave an indescribably droll glance at her long limbs and then at us, and added,—"Tell YOU, I had enough ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... These latter-day scales send out nail-like spikes laterally and atop, to lay hold upon their neighbors, and exhibit in their undersides grooves that accommodated the nails sent out, in turn, by their neighbors, to lay hold upon them. Their forms, too, are indescribably various and fantastic. It seems curious enough, that immediately after this extremely artificial state of things, if I may so speak, the two prevailing orders of the fish of the present day, the Cycloids and Ctenoids, should have been ushered upon the scene, and more than the original simplicity ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Emperor Leopold. I remember but little of the festivities, for at that time I was only fourteen years old, and the pompous ceremonies, together with the deafening shouts of the populace (who cheered the roast ox, larded with rabbits, no less enthusiastically than the German emperor), were indescribably tedious to me." ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... shape it was, but with accumulated dust and a fungous growth overspreading all its more admirable features, left her in utter weariness, no doubt, of her narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so uncomfortably paved with little squares of lava that to tread over them is a penitential pilgrimage, so indescribably ugly, moreover, so cold, so alley-like, into which the sun never falls, and where a chill wind forces its deadly breath into our lungs,—left her, tired of the sight of those immense seven-storied, yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Contrary to most mushrooms the upper surface of the cap and the stem are of nearly the same color, the stem being usually of a more brilliant red. The stem has a distinct root extending into the ground several inches. The whole plant is almost indescribably irregular. It is quite an attractive plant when seen growing among the weeds and beside stumps. The plants in Figure 332 I found growing among Datura stramonium beside old stumps in a pasture. I have found the same species growing on oak stumps. It is known ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... are admitted, and the tourist should ride right down to the shore, which is here very beautiful. The road now winds over the hills, and is undulating with fairly good but rather loose surface, and it is some miles until the lake is reached again. The scene here is indescribably beautiful, and reminds one forcibly of Killarney. The lake is studded with islands, and the shores are densely wooded, whilst northwards extends one of the most fascinating districts we have ever toured in. It consists of a regular jumble ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... and deepened in her cheeks, and there was something indescribably sweet and considerate in her tone of apology. Charles Osmond ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... children! they have refined and sensitive faces as well as straight regular features; and the expression of the girl's countenance, as well as the sound of her voice, and the sad humility of her deportment, are indescribably touching. Mr. B—— expressed the strongest interest in and pity for them, because of their colour: it seems unjust almost to the rest of their fellow unfortunates that this should be so, and yet it is almost impossible ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... is free again; the rest can be imagined. The day after tomorrow I quit my rooms in the Via Felice and move to Monte Mario (an hour's distance from the city). Father Theimer is kind enough to allow me to occupy his apartments in the almost uninhabited house of the Oratorian. The view is indescribably grand. I mean now, at last, to try and lead a natural kind of life. I hope I may succeed in approaching more closely to my monastico-artistic ideal...Meanwhile you may laugh at me about it. In my next letter I will tell ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... her look; his eyes wandered over her face. Those lips—they were indescribably alluring. It seemed impossible to give up the delight of kissing them; yet, of course, that was foolish, that was weak. He was not going to let the whole of his life hang upon a momentary desire like that. If she did ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... The scene looked indescribably desolate, and yet there was a certain beauty in it, too. I had been told exactly how to reach the House by the Lock, and when, after passing the somewhat weedy-looking lock, I began skirting along a species of backwater, and came in sight of a long, low-browed house close to ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... Angelica, and responsive barking on their part—and then start them with a whip. The first to arrive at the top of the stairs took the biscuit as a matter of course, and the others fought him for it. It was indescribably funny to see the whole pack tear up all eagerness, and then come down again, helter-skelter, tumbling over each other in the excitement of the scrimmage, some of them losing their tempers, but all of them enjoying the game; returning of their own accord to the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... street out of the noise, we found ourselves in face of a gateway which could only belong to a prison. The gate itself stood open, but the passage led to an iron-barred door, and in the passage—which was cool but indescribably noisome—a couple of children were playing marbles, with half a dozen turnkeys looking on and (I ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... turned slowly. Her face was a dumb cry for help, though it was a proud face too—one not lacking in fire and courage. I have seen fairer faces, but never one more to my liking. It was her eyes that held me. The blue of her own Highland lochs, with all their changing and indescribably pathetic beauty, lurked deeply in them. Unconsciously they appealed to me, and the world was not wide enough to keep me from her when they called. Faith, my secret is out already, and I had resolved that it should keep till near the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... again. Though I had for three hours endeavoured, as it were, to prepare myself for the unavoidable necessity of falling once again into the hands of the officers of law, the sensation I felt at their entrance was indescribably agonising. I was besides not a little astonished at the time and manner of their entrance; and I felt anxious to know whether Mr. Spurrel could be base enough to have been ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... desperate hope of being done good to. As he had been about to start out, having intended, when he sent the portrait, to follow close upon it, he had found himself feeling so ill—feeling, at the end of the dismal day, so indescribably burdened and ill and apprehensive of worse things—that he had been on the point of giving it up. But then the wish itself to escape from his bad feelings had impelled him forth toward the spot glowing warmer and cheerier in his thoughts than ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... C; this rubi'y, though indescribably beautiful in the Original, is somewhat too involved for us to grasp the meaning at one reading. Perhaps, in thus weaving the alphabet into his numbers, it was the purpose of the poet to give promise of the ultimate attainment of the Alpha and Omega of knowledge. Perhaps the ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... home mission fields which they have put in charge of the American Missionary Association. They have not yet recognized the peculiar fitness of our free-church system for the people who have so lately come into personal freedom that the very word is indescribably precious to them. This Association ought now to have not only the means for a more ample support of its educational service, but also for the broadening of its distinctive church missions. The day has come for the planting of free Congregational ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... was indescribably happy. There was a smile lingering in the wrinkles of her dear old face. We all gathered in the large, old-fashioned family room in the old-fashioned semicircle, with mother in her natural place in the corner. The preacher brother ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... moment it looked like a huge silver cone; then took the appearance of an illuminated castle with pinnacles and towers, or the dome of some great cathedral; then of a gigantic elephant, covered with trappings, but always of solid silver, and indescribably magnificent. Had all the treasures of the earth been offered me to say what it was, I should have been unable to answer. Bewildered by my interminable wanderings in the prairie, and weakened by fatigue ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... not until the 14th of June that they came in sight of the first iceberg, or until the 2nd of July that they reached Resolution Island, the valleys of which were filled with snow, while a dense fog hung over the land, rendering the scene before them indescribably dreary and desolate. In a short time the ships were surrounded by no less than six hundred and fifty-four icebergs, one of which rose to two hundred and fifty-eight feet above the sea. Among them were large floes, which were turned round and round by ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... each spoke in their turn, were, the King of England, the King of Naples, the Emperor of Austria, the Pope, and the Grand Signor. The dialogue was indescribably ridiculous. The piece opened with a council, in which the King of England entreated all his brother sovereigns to declare war against France and the French Emperor, and proceeded to assign some ludicrous reasons as applicable to each. "My contribution to the grand ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... to an indescribably tiresome kind of humility which does not exclude pride. Whether from modesty or by choice, Madame de Granville seemed to have a horror of light and cheerful colors; perhaps, too, she imagined that brown and purple beseemed the dignity of a magistrate. ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... The indescribably wild and thrilling character of gypsy music is thoroughly appreciated by the Russians, who pay very high prices for Romany performances. From five to eight or ten pounds sterling is usually given to a dozen gypsies for singing ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... never been able to discern the slightest resemblance either in manner or feature, or in those indescribably slight personal peculiarities that constitute a family likeness, between Nizza and her reputed father—neither could he now recall any particular resemblance between her and Thirlby; still he could not help thinking her beauty and high-bred looks ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... give character to observation and redeem it from the frigidity of mechanics, should be resisted to a certain extent. For, whatever they may be, they favour the growth of sentimentality, the protean and indescribably subtle ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... slightly, and turned. Drawing herself to her full height, she extended her hands over her head palm outward, and, with an indescribably graceful gesture, half mockingly bowed a ceremonious adieu to the solemn trees. Then with a little laugh she moved away in the direction of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... would have is already his:—he was the friend of Janus and my own," she answered in a tone of surprise that was almost indignant. And then, with a lingering on the words that was indescribably pathetic, ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... not think Mrs. Graham was particularly delighted to see us: there was something indescribably chilly in her quiet, calm civility; but I did not talk much to her. Seating myself near the window, a little back from the circle, I called Arthur to me, and he and I and Sancho amused ourselves very pleasantly together, while the two ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... life was also in ceaseless activity around the sketchers, filling the air with those indescribably quiet noises which are so suggestive of that general happiness which was originally in terrestial paradise and is ultimately to be ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... cultivated writers, they had certainly not been employed on this leaflet. His finer senses were as shocked at the meeting as his taste was at the pamphlet. Mingled odors of tobacco-smoke, beer, human breath, and damp clothes filled the air; the people at the tables had an indescribably common stamp, unlovely manners, harsh, loud voices, and unattractive faces. They gossiped and laughed noisily, and coarse expressions were frequent. The earnest moral tone, the almost gloomy melancholy which Wilhelm had found ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... shall know him no more forever. Those things, which have an imperishable value in being associated with his memory, are, to him, like the leaves of a past autumn to a tree now filled with blossoms. The mention of every valued possession once indescribably dear to him, would awaken but slight emotions; even the recent history of the dwelling which he built and furnished, would be no more to him than the rehearsal to a grown person of that which had happened to a block house, or card figure, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... cherry-trees were still in blossom. They advanced on their way further and further. The haze clung to the surface like a soft sash does round the waist, and to Genji, who had scarcely ever been out of the capital, the scenery was indescribably novel. The ascetic lived in a deep cave in the rocks, near the lofty summit. Genji did not, however, declare who he was, and the style of his retinue was of a very private character. Yet his nobility of ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... the height of this period that I became engaged to Audrey. Now that I can understand her better and see myself, impartially, as I was in those days, I can realize how indescribably offensive I must have been. My love was real, but that did not prevent its patronizing complacency being an insult. I was King Cophetua. If I did not actually say in so many words, 'This beggar-maid shall be my queen', I said it plainly and often in ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... continued to murmur: 'it was indescribably grand. Ah, green Erin, green Erin, what a day of glory! and oh, my calumniated dynamite, how triumphantly hast ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... enveloped with flames of such an intense heat, that its walls, towers, &c., appeared to be about to melt down! As the colors of the illuminating light changed suddenly from yellowish white to blue, green and red, the scene was so indescribably beautiful, that numbers of the ten thousand spectators actually ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... themselves. He cannot spare the time from his work, and how can he afford to humble himself and go a-masquerading! I was ready to give my life once and for all, but I could not degrade it in detail. Besides, there is something indescribably paltry in a stockbroker's tactics, who runs on errands for some insipid affected woman; all this disgusts an artist. Love in the abstract is not enough for a great man in poverty; he has need of its utmost devotion. The frivolous creatures who spend their lives in trying on cashmeres, or make themselves ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... which broke out that instant some little way down the street in the direction of the Priory. There was deep-mouthed shouting of men, frightened shrieks of women, howling and barking of curs, and over all a sullen, thunderous rumble, indescribably menacing and terrible. Round the corner of the narrow street there came rushing a brace of whining dogs with tails tucked under their legs, and after them a white-faced burgher, with outstretched hands and wide-spread fingers, his hair all abristle and his ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but it is one of the most travelled roads in the world, and certainly amongst the most famous. In every age and from all countries thousands of pilgrims landing at Jaffa have trodden this ancient road to the Holy City. The first part of it is indescribably beautiful, leading as it does through some of the orange groves which surround Jaffa. In the springtime, if you turn your horse a mile or two away from the town an incomparable view is spread before your eyes. On every hand stretch the orange groves, great splashes ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... indescribably absurd use of Law-Latin in records, writs, and written pleadings, was finally put an end to by statute 4 George II. c. 26; but this bill, which discarded for legal processes a cumbrous and harsh language, that was alike ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Chase was given, and every hole and corner searched in vain for the mischievous ape, who was at length discovered in what my brother dignified by the title of his laboratory, where, in a frenzy of gleeful activity, he was examining first one bottle and then another; finally he betook himself, with indescribably grotesque grinnings and chatterings, to uncorking and sniffing at them, and then pouring their contents deliberately out on the (luckily carpetless) floor,—a joke which might have had serious results for himself, as well as the house, if he ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a number of casts from statues by the same splendid hand. There IS the sublime, if you please—a new sublime—an original sublime—quite as sublime as the Greek sublime. See yonder, in the midst of his angels, the Judge of the world descending in glory; and near him, beautiful and gentle, and yet indescribably august and pure, the Virgin by his side. There is the "Moses," the grandest figure that ever was carved in stone. It has about it something frightfully majestic, if one may so speak. In examining this, and the astonishing picture of "The Judgment," or even a single ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but a few facts of the glaring fraud and corruption prevailing in every line of mercantile and financial business. Great and audacious as Gould's thefts were later, they could not be put on the same indescribably low plane as those committed during the Civil War by men most of whom succeeded in becoming noted for their fine respectability and "solid fortunes." So many momentous events were taking place during the Civil War, that amid all the preparations, the battles and excitement, those ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... which have already been noticed as of frequent occurrence in the great lakes. The morning was calm and sultry. A deep stillness pervaded Nature, which tended to produce a corresponding quiescence in the mind, and to fill it with those indescribably solemn feelings that frequently arise before a thunderstorm. Dark, lurid clouds hung overhead in gigantic masses, piled above each other like the battlements of a dark fortress, from whose ragged embrasures the artillery of heaven was ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... which the glacier is drained is raw-looking, deep and narrow, and indescribably jagged. The walls in many places overhang; in others they are beveled, loose, and shifting where the channel has been eroded by cinders, ashes, strata of firm lavas, and glacial drift, telling of many a change from frost ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... snugly enveloping him in the capacious folds of his pilot jacket, while with the other he seized Lina's hands, and leaning back against the boat, stood looking at her with a half-pitying, half-affectionate glance, that was indescribably comic ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... streams into the cave of the Sepulchre; and when the church itself is becoming dark, the effect produced by the light from the evening sky, passing through the deep-toned glass, and softly illuminating the Sepulchre, is indescribably solemn. ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... Esther stood speechless before him. Her long fastings and watchings had taken the color from her cheeks, but had given a greater transparency in its place, and as she stood, half shrinking, with the shadow of profound melancholy on her pallid, but indescribably beautiful countenance, her pencilled brow slightly contracted in the intensity of her excitement, her long lashes dripping in tears, and lips trembling with agitation; she was, though silent, in herself an appeal that a heart of stone could not resist. ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... were indescribably odious, reminding Sofia of the creature Sturm; he had a laugh like that for her, on the rare occasion when chance propinquity encouraged the Boche to begin one of his uncouth ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... is the handsomest I ever saw, and in itself has nothing disagreeable. It is formed of wax, and has a mournful expression which is quite attractive, at least when its owner sits still; but when she moves or speaks, the dead look of the mask has an indescribably unpleasant effect. Several persons have indirectly questioned the Marchese on this subject, but he evades or turns off their enquiries with all the tact of a consummate man of the world. Of course it would be indelicate, if not unfeeling, to ask her about it. Meantime the public amuses itself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... disagreeable sense that things were not as they had been, that his freedom had suffered a violation, that he could not sit down among his books with the old self-centred ease, that his prospects were completely, indescribably changed, perchance much for the worse. In brief, Tarrant had gone forth a bachelor, and came ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... explain everything to her,—-as he did not wish to leave an unpleasant impression of himself.... But, in point of fact, what was he to explain?—Now he aroused in himself something very like disgust for her, for her persistence, her boldness; again that indescribably touching face presented itself to him and her irresistible voice made itself heard; and yet again he recalled her singing, her recitation—and did not know whether he was right in his wholesale condemnation.—In one word: he was a tousled man! At last he became bored with all ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... yourself, granny! Ha, ha, ha! ho, ho, ho! haw, haw, haw!" shouted a mirthful voice, while an indescribably comic face, half cat and half baby, appeared for a single glimpse above the burdock leaf behind which the spinsters ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... suddenly to become one of the great events of a lifetime, and was unmarred by the disturbing apprehensions of any possible danger. The entire absence of sound was indescribably awe-inspiring as ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... scalp-locks and eagle feathers made him look a giant in the dim light, for a good eight feet lay between his beaded moccasin and the topmost plume of his headgear. One side of his face was painted in soot, ochre, and vermilion to resemble a dog, and the other half as a fowl, so that the front view was indescribably grotesque and strange. A belt of wampum was braced round his loin-cloth, and a dozen scalp-locks fluttered out as he moved from the fringe of his leggings. His head was sunk forward, his eyes gleamed with a sinister light, and his nostrils dilated and contracted like those of an excited animal. ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... valid reason to the contrary, for it transacted a very considerable business in sawed and split wood which it sold at current prices after paying each of its unfortunate employees twenty-two cents and an indescribably bad dinner for eight hours' hard work in the wood yard. Mr. Murch was also interested in a chain of blue-front restaurants, and a line of South American freighters, and last but not least, he was the heaviest stockholder and most potent factor ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... was free to make a suitable match, and she was just turning to wonder that Harry Ormond was not that moment at her niece's feet; and Dora's eyes, raised slowly towards him and suddenly retracted, abashed and perplexed Harry indescribably; when Corny continued thus: "Dora is not free, nor am I free in honour yet, nor can I give any body freedom of tongue or heart ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... hundred and fifty miles from Mauritius, yet its next-door neighbour westwards in the silver sea, there came, when Agnes was yet but seven years old, the tidings of a fearful persecution of the Christians. The letters received at that time told of indescribably dreadful sufferings for Christ's sake, and the sight of the Malagasy refugees who fled to Mauritius, fired her young soul with the desire to become a missionary. This desire, however, in her exceeding reserve, she kept to ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... the most marvellous collection of Japanese things. It is a most choice collection. There were some such funny things—a fiance and fiancee of Japan in costume were killing! and made-up monsters like life-sized mummies of the most hideous demons! Besides indescribably exquisite workmanship of all sorts. The pictures are not so charming a collection as those at Antwerp, but there are some grand ones. Tell Mother—Paul Potter's Bull is too indescribable! His nose, ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... hand, and when Michel Agnolo saw it, he praised me to the skies. This was a figure, as I have said, chiselled on a plate of gold; Atlas had the heaven upon his back, made out of a crystal ball, engraved with the zodiac upon a field of lapis-lazuli. The whole composition produced an indescribably fine effect; and under it ran the legend 'Summa tulisse juvat!' [3] Federigo was so thoroughly well pleased that he paid me very liberally. Aluigi Alamanni was at that time in Florence. Federigo Ginori, who enjoyed his friendship, brought him often to my workshop, and through this introduction ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... came back from church to Owen's sitting-room—not bear and monkey, not genie and fairy, as he had expected to see; but as they stood together, looking so indescribably and happily one, that Owen smiled and said, 'Ah! Honor, if you had only known twenty years ago that this was Mrs. Peter Prendergast, how much trouble ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about from place to place in the neighbourhood of Beauval and between it and the Somme. It stands greatly to the credit of the Battalion's fitness and discipline that not a man fell out during all those marches in the rain over indescribably miry roads. ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... shaded by the wide sockets fringed with long eyebrows, they were set, like a kite's eyes, in eyelids so broad, and bordered by so dark a circle sharply defined on his cheek, that they seemed rather prominent. These singular eyes had in them something indescribably domineering and piercing, which took possession of the soul by a grave and thoughtful look, a look as bright and lucid as that of a serpent or a bird, but which held one fascinated and crushed by the swift ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... bed, and Frank sat alone by the table for another hour or so, smiling to himself richly. There was nothing vindictive in his nature; but, if revenge came in his way, it might as well be good, and the thought of Archie's pillow reflections that night was indescribably sweet to him. He felt a pleasant sense of power. He looked down on Archie as on a very little boy whose strings he pulled - as on a horse whom he had backed and bridled by sheer power of intelligence, and whom he might ride ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mollie gasp, and began to sink slowly down. Down, down, down she swept, her skirt billowing out around her, her shoulders square, her head erect—down till she all but touched the floor, and how she kept her balance was a perfect miracle; then slowly up, with an indescribably graceful curve of neck and elbows, till once more she stood erect, pleased and triumphant, a pretty ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... about the security of her position; yet it had a fearful joy. A series of attentions paid to her, and yet not to her but to some imaginary person, by the first man she had ever been inclined to adore, complicated her emotions indescribably. She had loved him partly because he was exceptional in this scene, partly because she had determined to love him, chiefly because she was in desperate need of loving somebody after wearying of Wildeve. Believing that ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... indescribably severe that Miss Mapp's smile was frozen, so to speak, as by some sudden congealment on to her face, and did not thaw off it till she had reached the sharp turn at the end of the street, where she leaned heavily on the railing and breathed through her nose. A light ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the universe. The sun and the moon are the torches by which we study its splendid pages, turning diurnally for our perusal, and in star and flower alike dwells the lore which we cannot formulate into thought, but can only come indescribably to know by loving the pictures. "The meaning of all things that are" is there, if we can only find it. It flames in the sunset, or flits by us in the twilight moth, thunders or moans or whispers in ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... incredible as it may seem, for having developed the eye to the rarest point of perfection while dispensing entirely with the hook. The bare idea of this is no doubt terribly repulsive to us, but at the same time I think we should remember how indescribably repulsive our sartorial habits must seem ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... melancholy change in the sleeper, during the few days of his absence; how much thinner the hollow cheek, how sunken the closed eyes; how indescribably sharpened the outlines of each feature. The face which had formerly suggested some marble statue, had now the finer tracery as of an exquisite cameo; and oblivion of all earthly ills had set there the seal of a perfect peace. She lay so motionless, with her hands on her breast, that Mr. Dunbar ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... first, all but involuntary movement, he had not stirred. In his hands the big revolvers did not waver the breadth of a hair. Out of bloodshot, terrible eyes he was looking at that mute figure on the floor; looking at it immovably, indescribably, with an impassivity that was horrible. For the moment he seemed to have forgotten the others' presence, seemed at their mercy; and to the mind of Walt Wagner there came a suggestion. Slowly, surreptitiously one hand came out of his pocket, advanced by the fractions of inches towards his hip; advanced ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... lost in youthfulness she had gained in character. She had an innocent nobility of expression that came from a light within, as of one ready to answer unwaveringly wherever she might be called. Yet something in her soft eyes at times trembled into being, indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet—the soul of that Dosia who was made ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various |
